Chapter 1

Despite possessing a genius-level talent, he found it difficult to even run without his medication.

The game character he created as his third alternate persona.

He ended up entering that world.

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Prologue

“Well, what kind of character should I create this time....”

He ran his fingers through his messy hair and sat down in front of the computer. After a few quick taps on the keyboard, a familiar interface appeared on the screen. After entering his ID and password, the text "WORLD ver.3.0" appeared and disappeared, revealing two figures on the screen.

A young man chopping thick logs and dozing off, and a marksman holding a bright blue rifle. Near the young man lay a slightly faded gauntlet, and above the rifle's barrel, a magic circle was slowly rotating.

He looked at the young man and the warrior, put down the mouse, and fell into deep thought.

The two men moving inside the monitor were characters he had created and raised in the game himself.

The game WORLD was famous for aiming for an open-world single-player experience while continuously changing the world and timeline through regular updates.

He, too, had been creating and raising new characters with each update as he played the game.

Since he had thoroughly enjoyed the game in versions 1.0 and 2.0, he needed a new character for version 3.0.

After a brief moment of contemplation, he quickly grabbed the mouse and clicked the character creation button.

In fact, he had already given considerable thought to what kind of character he wanted to create.

For his third character, he intended to create one specialized in magic.

He wanted to fully experience the magic that he had enjoyed while playing the magician marksman he created as his second character.

The dazzling magic circles, powerful effects, and versatility not found in other classes or skills in WORLD were undoubtedly attractive in the vast open world.

So much so that his second character, the magician marksman, had become a "failed character" due to his excessive investment in magic abilities.

Having learned through the game that the difference between omnipotence and impotence is a fine line, he decided to raise a character perfectly specialized in magic this time.

If he allocated all the initial potential to magic in the talent selection window, at least he wouldn't end up with an ambiguous character.

“Shall we start?”

Having made his decision, he quickly determined the character's appearance and age and moved to the talent allocation window, pouring all the given potential into magic-related attributes.

“Magic power, control ability, computational ability... I can't forget to include mana sensitivity, which is a kind of affinity.”

After allocating all the initial potential to magic-related abilities, the completed character was a sight to behold.

On a 30-point scale, the magic-related stats hovered around 25 to 27, while the physical abilities barely reached 3 or 4, making the character a walking corpse.

The character's pale complexion, dressed in something resembling a hospital gown, might not have been a mere illusion.

However, he still looked unsatisfied as he stared at the monitor for a while before readjusting the mouse.

Scrolling down the stats window and moving the cursor to the traits section, he clicked the arrow to list all the available traits.

The traits section was designed to grant the character innate physical conditions, talents, or special abilities, but adding these traits required a significant amount of potential.

Therefore, it was common to simply add a few useful traits that would be beneficial in any situation and move on. However, he began to scroll down the list without even glancing at the other traits.

After a while, useful traits like "Perfect Health" and "Blue Blood" disappeared, and traits written in red text began to appear.

Traits like "Chronic Headache," "Magic Exhaustion," and "Sexual Repulsion," which seemed to impose penalties on the character and were generally considered negative.

An inexperienced player might mistake these for useless features for purely conceptual play, but he, having played the game twice, knew the real reason.

With a cautious expression, he began to select and add various unhelpful traits to the character.

“Straw man, insomnia, mana addict, overdoing it, and premature aging... I don't care about lifespan.”

Although it seemed incomprehensible to add penalties to a character he would play, surprisingly, every time he added a red-text trait, the remaining potential points, which he thought were all used up, began to increase.

The "Karma System," which activates only when creating a character in WORLD, paid the price equivalent to the penalties imposed on the character.

Thanks to this Karma System, players of WORLD could create characters more freely, beyond the simple limits of stats and traits.

By adding a few penalties, they could add talents or traits that were otherwise impossible to achieve with the given stats.

He had never actively used this Karma System before, but this time, he intended to push the character's concept to the limit.

Using the remaining potential points gained from the penalties he added to the character, he filled all the magic-related stats to the maximum 30 points and finally clicked the "Complete Creation" button with a satisfied look.

So what if the character had a poor physical condition, suffered from insomnia and mana addiction, and had a drastically shortened lifespan, making every movement a creaking ordeal? It was just a game character, and there was no better character for enjoying magic.

“It’s going to be fun.”

With such talent, he could expect performance beyond expectations from any magic he learned.

Just thinking about what magic to learn was already incredibly exciting.

After roughly setting the character's name and background and finishing the editing, a black loading screen filled the monitor.

“.........”

While waiting for the loading to finish, his eyes suddenly moved to the bottom of the screen.

The game tip that appeared in the corner of the loading screen to alleviate the player's boredom was particularly annoying.

[The first is chance. The second is inevitability. The third is destiny.]

[Three updates were all recorded for this moment.]

[Accept your destiny.]

“What...”

The tip was unusually forceful, and as he muttered to himself, a black light flashed, swallowing everything in the room.

After devouring all the traces of a person's life, it belched contentedly and disappeared, leaving the room as if nothing had ever been there, now covered in thick dust.